Page:Gide - Strait is the Gate.pdf/203

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

201 STRAIT IS THE GATE

exacts it. Can it be that I was not equal to it?


28th May. How dangerous this analysis of my sadness is! I am already growing attached to this book. Is my personal vanity, which I thought I had mastered, reasserting its rights here? No; may my soul never use this journal as a flattering mirror before which to attire itself! It is not out of idleness that I write, as I thought at first, but out of sadness. Sadness is a state of sin, which had ceased to be mine, which I hate, from whose complications I wish to free my soul. This book must help me to find my happiness in myself once more. Sadness is a complication. I never used to analyse my happiness. At Fongueusemare I was alone too, still more alone — why did I not feel it? And when Jerome wrote to me from Italy, I was willing that he should see without me, that he should live without me; I followed him in thought, and out of his joy I made my own. And now, in spite of myself, I want him; without him every new thing I see is irksome to me.


10th June. Long interruption of this journal which I had

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.